"In heaven," goes an old Chinese saying, "there is paradise. On earth, Suzhou and Hangzhou." I've now been to both, having spent the day in Suzhou, which is about an hour's train ride northwest of Shanghai. Personally, I think I might pick different cities as earth's answer to paradise, but I must agree that both are beautiful places. Suzhou's main attraction is its collection of exquisite Chinese gardens. I only managed to visit three of them, but I'm glad I went.

Chinese gardens, like Japanese gardens, have a lot more to do with water, rocks and trees than flowers and hedges. Although meticulously designed, they favor a natural appearance over the artificial order of, say, a classical French garden. For instance, the Garden of the Master of the Nets, reputed to be the best garden in Suzhou and certainly my favorite of the three I visited, is centered around a small pond some twenty feet by thirty feet. At one end is a small, circular pavilion in typical Chinese style, sporting a tile roof with upturned eaves. Across from that is a tall outcropping of bizarre, twisted rocks, looking like something out of an alien landscape, which I consider to be a hallmark of the gardens. A vinelike tree with twisted, clawlike branches crawls up over the outcropping. On the third side of the lake, a taller outcropping of rocks supports of pebble-paved walking trail that leads to a larger, rectangular pavilion. Across from that, on the fourth side of the pond, is a tree-lined path leading along the water's edge to a third pavilion. Aside from the pavilions, of course, the entire scene might be nothing more than a splendidly bizarre natural formation.

The other two gardens that I visited were the Blue Wave Pavilion and the large and famous Humble Administrator's Garden. The latter lacked the intimacy of the Garden of the Master of the Nets, sprawling over five hectares. It also featured large numbers of flowers and tourists. While beautiful, it felt more like a crowded park than a garden, and impressed me far less than the Garden of the Master of the Nets.

I also visited an active Taoist temple, which sits literally immersed in one of Suzhou's kitschier shopping districts. For the most part, it seemed almost exactly like a Chinese Buddhist temple, except that the giant statues in front of which people prostrate themselves are Taoist deities rather than Buddhas.

The other interesting thing about Suzhou is that it was once criss-crossed by canals, a la Venice. Some of these canals still exist, though most have been filled. In some of the older, more charming neighborhoods, you can still see the stairs leading down into the canal, with tile-roofed home leaning out over the water. As a general rule, though, where the canals have disappeared, so has Suzhou's charm. Modernization continues to threaten the canals, leaving the gardens (which are collectively on UNESCO's world heritage list, along with many of the other sites I've seen on this trip) the only protected aspect of Suzhou that once earned it such fame in the Chinese mind.

Another victim of Suzhou's modernization is my camera. While passing through one of many road construction sites, my camera fell out of my jacket pocket, bounced on the sidewalk and landed unserendipitously in one of the construction-created puddles. It appears to be broken. At worst, I've lost the camera and the pictures of Shanghai and Suzhou. The others are safely secreted away on a separate memory card, although I expect the second memory card to be safe as well. So never fear. There will be pictures of the trip -- just not the last bit of it.